The present invention relates to the field of mail transmission to handheld devices and, more particularly, relates to the providing of a push email function on handheld devices utilizing USSD or USSD-type resources.
With the emergence of computer networks, electronic mail or email allows people to exchange an electronic medium mail using a computer connected to a network such as the Internet. Email is widely used by all users of the Internet including mobile users utilizing handheld devices such as cellular phones, smartphones, PDAs and other similar devices.
With the development of mobile communication technologies, various information services based on a mobile communication network have been developed. For example, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) has been developed based on Short Messaging Service (SMS) and Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS), which implement the transmission of information content in rich media format such as text, picture, audio and video between a mobile terminal and a service provider/content provider (SP/CP).
Handheld devices are widely used among email users. Furthermore, handheld devices have a flexible and convenient mobility. Thus, browsing and transmitting emails using handheld devices may find wide application among mobile users.
Push email is a method in which the mobile receiver does not have to poll an email server to check for any new email. Instead, the email server may inform the handheld device when new email is received so that the handheld device may initiate the fetching of emails.